SOURCE: Lane, Maggie. “Mealtimes, Menus, Manners.” In Jane Austen and Food, pp. 25-54. London: The Hambledon Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Lane traces the changing customs governing dining practices in Austen's time and explains how various foodways served as indications of social class.

The society of which Jane Austen wrote being both more leisured and more formal than our own, the timing and nature of the meals which punctuated daily life, and the conventions and etiquette attaching to them, naturally differed in various ways from those we are familiar with.

At Chawton the breakfast hour was nine o'clock, but this seems to have been unusually early. Possibly it was so arranged that Jane might settle to her writing without delay; more likely, given her self-effacement and accommodating spirit, the entire household of brisk and well-organised women preferred early hours. At Godmersham the clocks striking ten was the signal...